An excerpt from Christopher Hills -The Century of Revolution.

This is was a speech made in parliament after a list of monopolies was read out.

A speech to parliament in 1601.

"It is difficult for us to picture to ourselves the life of a man living in a house built with monopoly bricks, with windows (if any) of mono- poly glass; heated by monopoly coal (in Ireland monopoly timber). burning in a grate made of monopoly iron. His walls were lined with monopoly tapestries. He slept on monopoly feathers, did his hair with monopoly brushes and monopoly combs. He washed himself with monopoly soap, his clothes in monopoly starch. He dressed in monopoly lace, monopoly linen, monopoly leather, monopoly gold thread. His hat was of monopoly beaver, with a monopoly band. His clothes were held up by monopoly belts, monopoly buttons, mono- poly pins. They were dyed with monopoly dyes. He ate monopoly butter, monopoly currants, monopoly red herrings, monopoly salmon, and monopoly lobsters. His food was seasoned with monopoly salt, monopoly pepper, monopoly vinegar. Out of monopoly glasses he drank monopoly wines and monopoly spirits; out of pewter mugs made fron monopoly tin he drank monopoly beer made from monopoly hops, kept in monopoly barrels or monopoly bottles, sold in monopoly-licensed alehouses. He smoked monopoly tobacco in monopoly pipes, played with monopoly dice or monopoly cards, or on monopoly lutestrings. He wrote with monopoly pens, on writing-paper, read (through monopoly spectacles, by the light of monopoly candles) monopoly printed books, including monopoly Bibles and monopoly Latin grammars, printed on paper made from monopoly-collected rags, bound in sheepskin dressed in monopoly alum. He shot with monopoly gunpowder made from monopoly salt- petre. He exercised himself with monopoly golf balls and in monopoly-licensed bowling alleys. A monopolist collected the fines which he paid for swearing. He travelled in monopoly sedan chairs or monopoly hackney coaches, drawn by horses fed on monopoly hay. He tipped with monopoly farthings. At sea he was lighted by monopoly lighthouses. When he made his will, he went to a monopolist. (In Ireland one could not be born, married, or die without 6d. to a monopolist.) Pedlars were licensed by a monopolist. Mice were caught in monopoly mousetraps. Not all these patents existed at once, but all come from the first decades of the seventeenth century. In 1621 there were alleged to be 700 of them."

Again we ask the question, what is the point of the labour party?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-rent-controls-lisa-nandy-keir-starmer-b2365616.html

The Collapse of Thames Water – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/06/30/the-collapse-of-thames-water/

Did you know that soon after the Bolshevik Revolution, sex workers established trade unions? Watch Lady Izdihar explore the Soviet Union’s view on prostitution and its efforts to support this marginalized group.

👉 Join @theredstream

An annual report published by the International Trade Union Confederation has revealed that the UK has been rated as a “regular violator of rights” and shares its shabby rating with countries including Albania, Belize, Canada, Liberia and South Africa.

https://files.mutualcdn.com/ituc/files/2022-ITUC-Rights-Index-Exec-Summ-EN_2022-08-10-062736.pdf

Archive – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/archive/

We have set up an archive page so people can revisit our articles easier.

The TUC throwing the rights of women and girls under the bus.

We look at news from the BMA and the Royal College of Nursing, victory for security workers at Heathrow, bin workers on strike in Bristol, Gloucestershire and Leicestershire and the ITUC criticises the UK for its shabby treatment of workers.

https://youtu.be/uaM4UKgKn7M via @YouTube

Delegates to Unite’s Policy Conference should leave the hall when Sir Keir Starmer takes the rostrum.

Labour is anti-worker, anti-trade union and anti-socialist. That Unite is affiliated to this party of imperialism at all disparages the union’s name.

Why is Britain so set on escalating the war in Ukraine? | The Communists
https://thecommunists.org/2023/06/17/news/why-britain-escalating-ukraine-war-rishi-sunak-depleted-uranium/

The Collapse of the Nurses’ Strike – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/04/the-collapse-of-the-nurses-strike/

As far as the revisionist CPB is concerned, trade unions are beyond reproach. Workers should join a union, take the free life insurance and the will-writing service and no more.

We respectfully disagree. We support the trade union movement, but will criticise it when criticism is due, we will point out its limitations and we will actively encourage workers not just to join a trade union, but to become active within its democratic structures, to challenge its bureaucracy and to be part of a cycle of members from the grassroots of the union, to its executive levels and, vitally, back to its grassroots again.

For workers to be better equipped to fight and defeat the exploitative system we exist within, we have to do much more than just #joinaunion

" Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system."

Karl Marx - Value, Price and Profit